Are Lawyers Getting Dumber?

[sparkythelawyer]

I read most of that article, and lordy she sounds smug as hell.

The exam she is referring to is where at the end of the first day of the exam, nobody could upload their exams to the software system, so they could not be entered has having taken the exams. Many test takers were up half the night trying to get their stuff uploaded. Then after all that mess, in multiple states affecting thousands of exam takers, they all showed up bright and early the next day to do the MBE. She'd like to wash that away as a cheap excuse, but I don't know that you can really do that. There was so much fuckery that went on with uploading the essays, it couldn't have NOT had an effect on many of the exam takers.

Also, w/r/t passing scores, several states started increasing the score they require to pass. I don't know if that is reflected in her analysis.

[LadySusan]

When did the people who took the July 2014 test start Law School? Are these the people who lost jobs in 2010 during the crash who said, "Whatever will I do with myself now? I know! I will go back to school!"

Wasn't there a surge in law school applications around that time? And weren't a lot of for-profit schools happy to open their doors wider to absorb those applicants and their tuition dollars?

ETA: Please note.  I'm the laziest and only read teh excerpt for the article.

[asdfjkl]

Aug 21, 2015 11:04:26 GMT -5 sparkythelawyer said:

I read most of that article, and lordy she sounds smug as hell.

The exam she is referring to is where at the end of the first day of the exam, nobody could upload their exams to the software system, so they could not be entered has having taken the exams. Many test takers were up half the night trying to get their stuff uploaded. Then after all that mess, in multiple states affecting thousands of exam takers, they all showed up bright and early the next day to do the MBE. She'd like to wash that away as a cheap excuse, but I don't know that you can really do that. There was so much fuckery that went on with uploading the essays, it couldn't have NOT had an effect on many of the exam takers.

Also, w/r/t passing scores, several states started increasing the score they require to pass. I don't know if that is reflected in her analysis.

Except that the scores were also lower in states that didn't have the software glitch.  

That lady has some pretty solid retorts for all of the excuses that have been thrust at her.  It's like she's a lawyer or something.

[sparkythelawyer]

Aug 21, 2015 11:11:35 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Aug 21, 2015 11:04:26 GMT -5 sparkythelawyer said:

I read most of that article, and lordy she sounds smug as hell.

The exam she is referring to is where at the end of the first day of the exam, nobody could upload their exams to the software system, so they could not be entered has having taken the exams. Many test takers were up half the night trying to get their stuff uploaded. Then after all that mess, in multiple states affecting thousands of exam takers, they all showed up bright and early the next day to do the MBE. She'd like to wash that away as a cheap excuse, but I don't know that you can really do that. There was so much fuckery that went on with uploading the essays, it couldn't have NOT had an effect on many of the exam takers.

Also, w/r/t passing scores, several states started increasing the score they require to pass. I don't know if that is reflected in her analysis.

Except that the scores were also lower in states that didn't have the software glitch.  

That lady has some pretty solid retorts for all of the excuses that have been thrust at her.  It's like she's a lawyer or something.

I'm not saying she didn't have some valid points, just that I think she is downplaying some of the contributing issues. 

[sparkythelawyer]

Ah ok

[cville]

Aug 21, 2015 9:09:09 GMT -5 nursecramer said:

Doesn't the LSAT pilot the questions prior to creating new exams? The 2014 questions would have been administered in 2013 (without contributing to the 2013 test takers' scores) and then a statistical comparison can be made to determine the item difficulty. It should be easy to dispute the allegation that the questions were harder.

I'm not trying to be a dick, but what does this have to do with the bar exam?

[cville]

Aug 21, 2015 11:39:09 GMT -5 nursecramer said:

Aug 21, 2015 11:35:09 GMT -5 cville said:

I'm not trying to be a dick, but what does this have to do with the bar exam?

lololol. So yeah, definitely not a lawyer. But I know how to create standardized assessments dammit! sorry sparkythelawyer

/goes off to find RELEVANT details.

Ha! The only test I hated more than the LSAT was the bar exam, so they're burned into my soul.

[aurademystere]

Aug 21, 2015 11:30:22 GMT -5 nursecramer said:

Aug 21, 2015 11:00:16 GMT -5 sparkythelawyer said:

They did not that I am aware of when I took the bar exam.  

I also found the bar exam to be not very relevant to actual law school, but what do I know. 

Ok, so I looked it up. From lsac.org:

Pretest sections are administered to a sample of test takers from the LSAT test-taking population. Results from the pretest provide test development staff with statistical information about each question, and with information about possibly ambiguous or misleading information in the question or in one or more of the answer choices. If problems are identified, either the question is discarded or it is revised and pretested again. All questions that pass the quality standards of a pretest administration are placed in the LSAT test question item bank. New test sections are assembled by selecting questions from this LSAT item bank. Each fully assembled test section is administered on one or more separate occasions for the purpose of pre-equating the new form. Pre-equating is a statistical method used to adjust for minor fluctuations in the difficulty of different test forms so that a test taker is neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the particular form that is given. Following each pre-equating administration, the statistical information about each question is reviewed to assure that the data support that the question is of appropriate difficulty, discriminates higher ability test takers from lower ability test takers, is unambiguous, and has a single best answer. When the test is given at a regular LSAT administration, but before final scoring is completed, statistical analysis is conducted one last time. Each question is evaluated using the same criteria that were applied following the pretesting and pre-equating administrations. If a problem is found, the question is eliminated from the test before final scoring and reporting are accomplished.


So if this was the procedure they were following, the tests are statistically the same difficulty.

The LSAT is the exam taken before entering law school, not the bar exam. The questions are very different

[NewOrleans]

Just thought I'd point out that the LSAT is 3.5 hours long and the 3rd grade PARCC test is 10 hours long. Carry on.

[sugarglider]

Aug 21, 2015 11:11:35 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

Aug 21, 2015 11:04:26 GMT -5 sparkythelawyer said:

I read most of that article, and lordy she sounds smug as hell.

The exam she is referring to is where at the end of the first day of the exam, nobody could upload their exams to the software system, so they could not be entered has having taken the exams. Many test takers were up half the night trying to get their stuff uploaded. Then after all that mess, in multiple states affecting thousands of exam takers, they all showed up bright and early the next day to do the MBE. She'd like to wash that away as a cheap excuse, but I don't know that you can really do that. There was so much fuckery that went on with uploading the essays, it couldn't have NOT had an effect on many of the exam takers.

Also, w/r/t passing scores, several states started increasing the score they require to pass. I don't know if that is reflected in her analysis.

Except that the scores were also lower in states that didn't have the software glitch.  

That lady has some pretty solid retorts for all of the excuses that have been thrust at her.  It's like she's a lawyer or something.

The glitch impacts how all others are scored, too.

www.lawschoolcafe.org/thread/examsoft-new-evidence-from-ncbe/

I'm a class of 2014 attorney who passed the July 2014 California bar exam ("hardest" bar exam, but I don't know my MBE score). My class nationwide was marginally dumber (based on admissions statistics) than the class of 2013 going in, but the big drop happened the year after, with the class of 2015.

[nsl]

I got 30% correct, which confirms that I made the right choice when I decided not to pursue pre-law during my junior year of college. I am, however, inordinately gratified that I got the one media law question correct since media law was the one pre-law class I took before deciding that a straight English major was the way for me to go.

[ESF]

Clearly I am getting dumber because I only got 40%. I passed two exams! LOL.